MQTT / Home Assistant for Audio Forge

Audio Forge 1.4.4 introduces MQTT / Home Assistant integration, so your TTRPG soundboard can finally plug into the rest of your setup. You can now trigger music, ambiance, and one‑shots from automations, wall switches, stream deck buttons, or anything else that can publish to MQTT.

Want your battle music, lights, and fog machine to fire on the same button press? Now you can.

What the MQTT integration can do

With MQTT enabled, Audio Forge can:

• Publish its current state (which library is active, whether Music/Ambiance are playing, which categories are active, volumes, last Echo, etc.).
• Expose simple commands you can send from Home Assistant or Node‑RED to play, pause, stop, change library, set volume, and trigger Echoes.
• Optionally use Home Assistant Discovery to auto‑create entities (buttons, sensors, numbers, switches, selects) under an “Audio Forge” device.

That means you can:

• Start or pause Music/Ambiance with a Home Assistant button.
• Fade music volume automatically when you change scene.
• Toggle Ambiance layers with physical or virtual switches.
• Trigger Echoes (one‑shot sounds) from automation events.

Enabling MQTT in Audio Forge

In the app, go to Settings → MQTT Integration and:

1. Turn Enabled on.
2. Enter your MQTT Host and Port (1883 by default, or 8883 for TLS).
3. Fill in Username / Password if your broker requires them.
4. Optionally adjust Client ID, Base Topic (by default something like audioforge/my-pc), QoS, and whether to retain state.
5. Turn on Publish state and Subscribe to commands.
6. (Optional but recommended) Enable MQTT Discovery to let Home Assistant create entities automatically.

Once connected, you’ll see Audio Forge under your broker’s clients, and Home Assistant will either show the new device automatically (with discovery) or you can wire it manually with MQTT sensors and buttons.

Examples: simple automations

Here are a few ideas of what you can do once MQTT is enabled:

• Create a “Battle” button in Home Assistant that starts a “Battle” music category in Audio Forge and turns your lights red.
• Use a binary sensor (like “players enter dungeon”) to switch to your dungeon ambiance and drop music volume a bit.
• Link a Stream Deck button (via Home Assistant or another MQTT‑capable tool) to trigger an Echo (e.g., thunder, door slam, dragon roar).
• Tie your fog machine to dramatic Echoes or music changes by having everything respond to the same automation.

Under the hood, these automations just publish small JSON messages to the Audio Forge command topic (for example: {"command":"play","section":"Music","categoryName":"Battle"}). You don’t need to write much JSON yourself if you use the built‑in discovery entities.

Learn the details

If you want to see all topics, payloads, and command options (including volume control, category switches, and state restore), check the full guide:

MQTT / Home Assistant guide

It includes example commands and a sample Home Assistant automation you can copy‑paste and adapt to your table.

Get Audio Forge 1.4.4

Update now and connect Audio Forge to your smart home:

Download Audio Forge

Have questions, or want to share your automations? Join the community on Discord.